Bridge named after musician

Q: We were having some discussions about the Eighth Street Bridge, the person who had the vision to build it and where the name Albertus Meyers came from. Could you answer these questions and also let me know some history behind the bridge?

Michele Klucsarits

via-e-mail

A: The Eighth Street Bridge, which will be 100 years old in 2013, was born because a trolley company wanted to reduce the time it took to travel from Allentown to Philadelphia.

The bridge's concept first appears on the record about 1900. Local engineer Robert Rathbun made the suggestion, but his was for a much smaller span to bridge the frequently flooded Little Lehigh flood plain.

The project was started but halted in 1904 or 1905 for an unknown reason.

But a larger-scale project  the current Eighth Street Bridge  was started in 1912. Accounts don't indicate who decided the bridge should be the type and size it became.

It is possible that Gen. Harry C. Trexler, who was then the driving force behind the Lehigh Valley Transit Co., an electric street car line, came up with the concept of a grand bridge. The bridge carried the Liberty Bell, the LVT's popular service from Allentown to Philadelphia.

The bridge was designed by the engineering firm of B.H. Davis. MacArthur Brothers of New York did the construction.

The span consists of nine 120-foot broad arches. It is 2,650 feet long, required 45,000 barrels of cement, 29,500 cubic yards of concrete and 1.1 million pounds of reinforcing rods. It cost $500,000. When it opened on Nov. 17, 1913, it was touted by the trolley company as ''the largest and highest concrete bridge in the world'' at 138 feet.

The structure was a toll bridge from the time it was built until the 1950s, when it was taken over by the state highway department. Although the toll was small, there was a great deal of dispute  particularly in the 1930s when times were tough  over paying the toll. Pedestrians were charged one cent, bicyclists two cents and motor vehicles a nickel.

The name of the bridge was changed in 1974 to honor Albertus L. Meyers. Meyers was the longtime musician with and conductor of the Allentown Band. The band played when the bridge was dedicated in 1913.